Modelling effects of climate change on photosynthetic enzymes to find solutions for future food and environmental security

“光合作用是地球尺度上最重要的生物过程，在高温下受到二氧化碳固定酶Rubisco及其催化伴侣Rubisco激活酶的限制。Rubisco是地球上最丰富的酶，其全球质量估计在0.04至0.4 Gt之间，其上限接近目前人类的全球质量。和人类一样，Rubisco在改变生态系统方面的能力也超出了自身的能力。Sage等人（J Exp Bot 2008）表明，Rubisco和Rubisco激活酶可能是对高热敏感性的单一主要控制，因此黑云杉（北美北方森林中主要的初级生产者和主要的碳汇）未来的成功。尽管Rubisco是二氧化碳固定和物种未来成功的关键角色，但在不同气候变化情景下，它的表现如何影响未来生态系统的建模工作很少。我们发表了一系列温度下Rubisco的动力学（Orr et al. & Hermida et al.）。Plant Phys 2016)，并模拟了哪种rubisco在[CO2]和温度上升的情况下表现更好（Sharwood等人）。自然植物2016)。该项目将结合生物和环境信息学领域，利用我们的酶特性数据，结合来自公开数据库的蛋白质序列和结构、物种分布和气候数据。主要目的是在分子、物种、生态系统和行星水平上模拟气候变化对Rubisco和Rubisco活化酶性能的影响。这个博士项目将与最近资助的Rubisco合成生物学项目协同作用，并为人类辅助的生态和农业重要物种的耐热性进化提供信息，这可以减轻气候变化的负面影响，同时满足不断增长的世界人口的营养和能源需求-联合国可持续发展的关键目标。”

"Photosynthesis, the most important biological process on a planetary scale, is limited under high temperature by the CO2 fixing enzyme, Rubisco, and its catalytic chaperone, Rubisco activase. Rubisco is the most abundant enzyme on a planet with estimates of its global mass ranging from 0.04 to 0.4 Gt, where the upper limit approaching current global mass of humans. And like humans, Rubisco punches above its weight in its ability to change ecosystems. Sage et al. (J Exp Bot 2008) showed that Rubisco and Rubisco activase could be the single principal control over a high thermal sensitivity and hence the future success of black spruce, the predominant primary producer and a major carbon sink in the boreal forests of North America. Despite Rubisco being the key player in both CO2 fixation and the future success of species, very little work has been done to model how its performance will affect future of ecosystems under different climate change scenarios. We published Rubisco kinetics under a range of temperatures (Orr et al. & Hermida et al. Plant Phys 2016) and modelled which Rubiscos will perform better under rising [CO2] & temperature (Sharwood et al. Nature Plants 2016).The proposed project will combine fields of bio- and environmental informatics using our data on enzyme properties combined with data on protein sequences and structure, species distribution and climate from publicly available databases. The major objective is to model effects of climate change on Rubisco and Rubisco activase performance on the molecular, species, ecosystem, and planetary levels. This PhD project will be synergistic to recently funded one on synthetic biology of Rubisco and inform human-assisted evolution of heat tolerance in key species of ecological and agricultural importance, which could mitigate negative effects of climate change, while meeting nutritional and energy demands of a growing world population - key UN sustainable development goals. "